I studied the figures that evening until Betty came in and put her dear hands on my forehead and said, "How hot your head is, boy dear--are you worrying over anything in particular?" "No," I said with a smile. "Well," she replied, "it is 12:30 and quite time you were getting some beauty sleep." I said I was not worried, but I didn't like the size of my liabilities. I began to think I had been a fool in buying so heavily. The next morning I had a bit of excitement, with the result that I paid Myricks his money and let him go. I had decided to adhere to the division of expenses that Jock had worked out, and that meant reducing the force. Accordingly, I had told Myricks that he could stay a few weeks until he got another job, and I meant it, but that morning, when I caught him in the basement tossing lamp chimneys into the fixtures so carelessly that a number of them were broken, I got mad and told him he was an ungrateful scamp, and that I thought he was deliberately destroying my property. He turned around and said I had no cause to say he was a crook, and that, even if I was his boss, he had friends who would help him to protect his reputation! Then I saw red, and plugged him under the jaw! Next I called him upstairs, gave him a week's money, and let him go. His parting remark was, "Everybody's getting wise to you; I'm glad to be through before the smash comes. Mr. Stigler told me what would happen and I can get a job there now--and I'm going to him right away!" It didn't scare me any--it merely aroused my fighting blood. There was one good lesson I learned that day, though, and that was, "Never to talk to an employee while in a temper." I felt that I had lowered my dignity by so doing; and, even though I had done him no harm, I certainly had not done myself any good. I didn't like what he had said about Stigler, but if he thought it worried me he was mistaken. If Stigler was spoiling for a fight I'd give him one! . . . I had begun to think that Larsen was a pretty shrewd fellow; certainly when he did thaw enough to make a criticism it was generally worth listening to. One day, Jerry Teller, a rather fussy carpenter who did excellent work, and who was always wanted when any extra fine work was desired, came in with a complaint that a back saw he had bought a week or so before was not perfect. I looked it over carefully, but couldn't see a thing the matter with it until Jerry pointed out a crack in the handle from the rivet to the back. It was such a trifling thing that I did not feel inclined to change it, besides, as I told him, how did I know it hadn't cracked since he had had it? He swore up and down that it was like that when he bought it, for he was too careful of his tools to damage them. He demanded a new saw or his money back.